An experimental study has been carried on high-preheated temperature air combustion. The flames with high-preheated temperature air combustion turned out to be both temporally and spatially much more stable and homogeneous than these with room-temperature combustion air. The global flame feature showed a range of flame colors (yellow, blue, blurish-green) according to the flame conditions. A low level of NOx along with low level of CO has been obtained under high-preheated air combustion conditions. The thermal and chemical behavior of high-preheated air combustion flames depends on the preheated temperature and the oxygen concentration of air.

Soot generation by combustion process has been investigated with objective of understanding of chemical reaction responsible for its formation in a coaxial laminar propane jet diffusion flame. For the direct photos, as the coflowing air flow rate is reduced, the area of soot luminous zone increases at first, then becomes smaller and smaller, and even disappears. The aspects of soot deposition can be acquired by using nine thin SiC fibers are positioned horizontally across the flame. Deposited soots on SiC fibers show the soot inception point and growth and soot oxidation zone in a typical propane diffusion. Soot is not generated anymore in a oxidizer deficient conditions of near-extinction and flame is fully occupied by transparent blue flame. It suggests that nonsooting pyroligneous blue reaction is being dominant in a oxidizer deficient ambience. In comparison with luminosities of SiC fibers and flame itself, indirect evidence is found that the process of soot nucleation and growth is endothermic reaction. It is remarkable that there exists two adjacent regions to have antithesis characteristics; one is exothermic reaction of blue flame and another endothermic reaction zone of soot formation.

Combustion performance of an internally cycloned circulating fluidized bed for paper sludge was discussed through a series of batch type experiments. Operation parameters such as water content, feeding mass of sludge and secondary air injection rate were varied to find out the effect on the combustion performance, which was examined with carbon conversion rate and pollutant emission such as CO and NOx. A conventional solid fuel reaction was observed in the experiments of varying water content and feeding mass of the sludge, which is characterized with kinetic limited reaction zone, diffusion limited reaction zone and transition zone. Secondary air injection with swirl enhances the mixing of the gas phase as well as the solid phase, and improves combustion efficiency accompanied with higher carbon conversion rate and lower pollutant emission rate.

Processes in an iron ore sintering bed can characterized as a relatively uniform progress of fuel, cokes combustion and complicated physical change of solid particles. The sintering bed was modelled as an unsteady one-dimensional progress of the fuel layer, containing two phases: solid and gas. Coke added to the raw mix, of which the amount is about 3.5% of the total weight, was assumed to form a single particle with other components. Numerical simulations of the condition in the iron ore sintering bed were performed for various parameters: moisture contents, cokes contents and air suction rates, along with the various particle diameters of the solid for sensitivity analysis. Calculation results showed that the influence of these parameters on the bed condition should be carefully evaluated, in order to achieve self-sustaining combustion without high temperature section. The model should be extended to consider the bed structural change and multiple solid phase, which could treat the inerts and fuel particles separately.

A numerical study was carried out to investigate combustion phenomena in a model Scramjet engine, which had been experimentally studied at the University of Tokyo using a high-enthalpy supersonic wind tunnel. The main airflow was Mach number 2.0 and the total temperature of hot flow was 1800K. Equivalence ratio was set to be 0.26 which is higher than that of experiment to investigate the effect of strong precombustion shock. The results showed that self-ignition occurred at the rear bottom wall of the combustor and combined with the shear layer flame between fuel jet and main airflow. Then, precombustion shock was generated at the step location and reversely enhanced the mixing and combustion process behind the shock. Due to the high equivalence ratio, the precombustion shock moved upstream of the step compared with that of experiment.

Characteristics of lifted flames in axisymmetric laminar coflow jets have been investigated experimentally. Approximate solutions for velocity and concentration accounting virtual origins have been proposed for coflow jets to analyze the behavior of liftoff height. From the measurement of Rayleigh intensity for probing the concentration field of propane, the validity of the approximate solutions was substantiated. From the images of OH PLIF and CH chemiluminescence and the Rayleigh concentration measurement, it has been shown that the positions of maximum luminosity in direct photography coincide with the tribrachial points, which were located along the stoichiometric contour. The liftoff height in coflow jets was found to increase highly nonlinearly with jet velocity and was sensitive to coflow velocity.

The propagation speed of tribrachial flame in laminar propane jets has been investigated experimentally under normal and micro gravity conditions. The displacement speed was found to vary nonlinearly with axial distance because flow velocity along stoichiometric contour was comparable to the propagation speed of tribrachial flame for the present experiment. Approximate solutions for velocity and concentration accounting density difference and virtual origins have been used in determining the propagation speeds of tribrachial flame. Under micro gravity condition, the results showed that propagation speed of tribrachial flame is largely affected by the mixture fraction gradients, in agreement with previous studies. The limiting maximum value. of propagation speeds under micro gravity conditions are in good agreement with the theoretical prediction, that is, the ratio of maximum propagation speed to the stoichiometric laminar burning velocity is proportional to the square root of the density ratio of unburned to burnt mixture.